


Wanna let it burn

by limitlessrose (shinealightrose)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M, Minor Character Death after a Long Happy Life, Pining, There's a lot of reminscing about death, Unrequited Love, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27474616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightrose/pseuds/limitlessrose
Summary: No summary, just vampires Taeil and Johnny, reminiscing about the lost love of Taeil's life.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Moon Taeil, Moon Taeil/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 5
Kudos: 39





	Wanna let it burn

**Author's Note:**

> Had this melancholy idea last night and well, here we are

Three hundred years ago, Taeil used to think the moon looked beautiful. Alone up there in the night sky, brighter than anything else, reflecting back upon the earth the only kind of light for their kind to live under. 

The last sixty years have changed him. 

“Do you ever miss it?”

“Miss what?”

“The sun.”

Johnny’s laugh is short, weak. He’s only been dead a few, short one hundred years. “Not really.” The sound of his words dissipates upon the wind, drowned by the echoing voices from the balcony below, a party neither one of them was invited to. For no one remembers Taeil anymore. The dead have died, while Taeil lives on. 

“You never think about it?”

“Not really.”

“He would have missed it.”

Johnny doesn’t answer right away. The two of them cling to the shadows of the rooftop of the opposite building. Taeil catches the occasional glimpse of a familiar face through the open windows, a halfway familiar voice. Familiar only in its genetics. These are merely the descendants of a man Taeil once loved. 

“Why do they call it a wake, anyway?” asks Taeil.

Johnny hums. “You know, I’ve never really figured that out.”

Celebration of life. Taeil doesn’t get it. What is there to celebrate when a person has already died. Donghyuck is gone _. Gone _ gone from this world, and not in the way Taeil had once hoped he would be. 

The memories run adrift now of an age long gone. He and Donghyuck, on a rooftop not unlike this one, not even that far away. Donghyuck was born, raised, lived, and died in the same neighborhood his entire life. Taeil and Johnny meanwhile have seen the world over. 

Now Taeil kind of wants to burn it. 

He can’t even cry. Tears don’t work for creatures such as them, creatures of the haunting night. His jaw aches though. Fangs hungering for a taste he hasn't wanted in years. Kisses upon Donghyuck’s throat, bodies upon one another. A plea, one bitter plea, asking Donghyuck to be like him. Be like him forever. 

Burn it, he wants this world to burn. Wants to see the cities razed to the ground, the countries to collapse. 

Maybe, maybe if he lives long enough, him and Johnny, they really will get to experience the end of the world. 

And he’ll do it without Donghyuck. Donghyuck who loved him, but didn’t love him _ enough _ . 

“It’s been sixty years. How did I leave him alone for  _ sixty _ whole years?”

Again, Johnny doesn’t say anything. He does, however, rest an arm around Taeil’s shoulders. 

“I didn’t even come back until it was too late. I could have ...I could have…”

“Could have  _ what _ ?” says Johnny finally. Taeil pretends he can’t hear the exasperation in his voice. “He didn’t want you to see him.”  To see him grow old, that's what Johnny means. To see him die. 

“But, he didn’t have to know…”

“He would have known. You know that. He always  _ felt _ you a little differently than most humans do.”

Taeil clenches his fist. His fangs are burning. Aching with want. And one of those faces down below looks  _ so  _ like him. Like Donghyuck when he was young, when he was still alive. 

“We should go.”

“I haven’t said goodbye yet.”

Johnny sighs loudly. “Then do it. Say your goodbyes, you’re  _ always _ saying your goodbyes. Say it for the last time. Then, let’s get out of here.”

Taeil wants to. He  _ really _ wants to. But it has been so long, and Taeil kept himself so far away. His body doesn’t know how to cope with this now. Not since their return. Not since he physically  _ felt _ Donghyuck’s suffering, his pain, his relief, and his death. No ends of the earth could keep them apart and yet Taeil still arrived too late. It’s too late for goodbyes. Impossible he could even try to do it now. Donghyuck will forever be the one he lost. 

“He was only eighty years old…” he mutters out loud. 

“A good life for a human, you know that.”

“He could have had it all though.”

Johnny snorts. “Really? What’s so good about us anyway? Immortality isn’t that great.”

“Why can’t it be? We have more than a lifetime to live. I could have given him that. He could still have been with me now. He would never have aged…”

“You said it yourself, he would have missed… things too much. He would have missed the sun. He would have missed out on  _ life _ .”

Taeil squints his eyes. He knows, he knows all of this. How many children and grandchildren are even in that house right now. People who got to live with and know Donghyuck for far longer than Taeil ever did. It’s not fair… It’s really not fair. In a few hundred years even these people will have passed away and who will remember Donghyuck then. Who will sit around his picture telling stories about his smile and his jokes and all the stupid things he did and got away with. Who will talk about his love and how they go to experience it. 

No one will. 

Only Taeil will. 

“How can you miss out on life, when you can live forever.”

Taeil feels Johnny stiffen at his side. He senses that rare flair of anger. Johnny has been his anchor for so long. His companion in death, his best friend, ever there for him, especially after…

“I don’t know, Taeil. Really, I don’t know.” Johnny is brimming with anger, a sensation almost akin to hatred. Johnny, Taeil remembers, hated Donghyuck too after he refused the gift. Hated how it tore Taeil up, hated Taeil’s sadness, his lingering regrets. 

“What do you mean?”

Johnny doesn’t look at him when he says, “Life? This undead life? Don’t you ever wonder what the point of it is?”

“You mean, what’s our purpose in life?”

“Screw having a purpose. But us? What are we living for anyway. You? Me? I’ve followed you for a hundred years and still you don’t look at me. You look at him. And he’s dead. Probably died happier than we’ve ever been.”

“That’s… that’s not true.” Taeil refuses to remark on the rest of that… He can’t. He won’t… Donghyuck’s soul is no longer in this world and Taeil still can’t bring himself to accept that reality… Even with Johnny… still here.

There’s silence now. Someone has shut the balcony door and the windows. A gust of cool wind blows down the alley between the buildings. A cloud moves to block the moonlight, and they sit there in darkness once more.

“Come away with me again,” says Johnny into the night.

“Where to?”

“Anywhere. Where do you want to go most?”

And for a moment, Taeil truly thinks about it. The places he and Johnny have lived, all the happy moments between them. The adventures they have gone on, the dreams they can realize again and again. Just the two of them like it’s been for a century and not even Donghyuck could shake that reality. Taeil and Johnny, together for every lifetime. 

There’s a yearning brimming deep under Taeil’s skin. Hunger and hope, lust and a desire for life. Where  _ haven’t  _ they been that they could travel to now? What careers, what knowledge, what drives they have to look forward to… He could even go back, take Johnny to the place he was born, let him experience through Taeil’s eyes all of the history Taeil has lived through before Johnny was even born. And he knows, he knows Johnny would follow him anywhere…

“We could…” he starts. Then his voice is whisked away. 

A door opens at street level. A young man walks out. He’s bundled in a heavy coat, smoking one of those awful cigarettes that people these days like to use. And his hair is curly, lightly brown and frizzing at the back of his neck. 

His neck…

Taeil’s fangs water to the memory of a long-forgotten taste.

“Taeil? Taeil what-”

“Hang on, I’m just… thinking about something.” 

He’s not thinking at all. That’s Taeil’s last coherent thought. Hunger takes him over. Memories starker than that. A desire and a purpose, and who cares if it’s all wrong. 

Johnny would say it was but… 

Taeil is just so very, very hungry…

  
  
  
  


By the time the moonlight resurfaces, Johnny sits alone upon the rooftop deep in thought. Deep in his regrets. The wake for one Lee Donghyuck has long been concluded, the guests gone home or gone to sleep. And Taeil is gone too. Johnny watched him last disappear around a corner, arm in arm with one young man deeply glamored by his looks and his charm that he’ll never know Taeil’s interest isn’t in him personally until it’s too late. 

At least — and this is what Johnny has comfort in — at least it’ll never be too late for Johnny. He’s always going to be there. Whatever Taeil does, whoever he loves. At the end of the day, at the end of a few years, they’re only mortal. 

  
  
  



End file.
